


Cleaning the Cabin

by artifactstorageroom3_archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2009-05-11
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artifactstorageroom3_archivist/pseuds/artifactstorageroom3_archivist
Summary: Post TSBS, Blair isn't getting into the academy and volunteers to help Jim’s father clean up the family cabin.





	Cleaning the Cabin

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).

Blair huffed out a breath as he wiggled in an attempt to make the cold floor he was sitting on more comfortable. This, he mused, was what one got when one tried to run from one’s problems.

 

He had been shocked when Jim and Simon’s little proposition of a job in Major Crimes had been met not with disdain, but with wholehearted approval by the higher-ups. As Simon told it, the praised lavished about his work as a consultant was almost embarrassing. “Of course,” they’d said, “Mr. Sandburg would be a welcome addition to the Cascade Police. He can have the job just as soon as he finishes at the academy.”

 

By the third time that his enrollment in said Academy had been postponed, it was no longer such great news. First they lost his application. Then all the classes were full. The third round had something to do with a computer failure that erased his name from the roster. 

 

It was a great political maneuver. They never denied his achievements. They never denied his application, but they kept him out of the department just the same. 

 

If he were anybody else, he’d be able to claim discrimination. But really, what could he do? Claim discrimination about a confessed fraud joining the police? 

 

Of course, that left him nothing to do but sit at home where Jim simultaneously avoided and doted upon him like he was a beloved dog that had gotten rabies that Jim couldn’t bear to have put down. 

 

Gone was the grumpy Jim of yesteryear. Oh no, now there were favorite meals served, and sensitive topics avoided. Bills miraculously paid themselves. No hints that maybe old Sandburg should go get a part-time job while they waited out the political storm over the academy. No suggesting that maybe he could make himself useful and do some home improvement projects. No angry, stony silences when Blair brought up the fact that Jim wasn’t being Jim. 

 

The only thing that Blair got when he mentioned that little fact was a terrible, guilt stricken look from the forlorn sentinel. It was a horrid thing to see, and something that Blair couldn’t come up with a way to fix. So, even though it was against his nature, Blair backed off. He just sat back and let Jim pay the bills and buy groceries from the little ethnic market that he hated. 

 

He wasn’t sure what bothered him more: Jim’s weird behavior or his own.

 

Then Jim mentioned in one of their non-conversations that his father had called and wanted to know if Jim wanted some old cabin that his father owned. Jim’s first reaction was to decline the offer entirely. He didn’t want his father thinking that giving him expensive gifts would make up for the past. Blair had simply argued that a cabin in the middle of nowhere would be a good place to take refuge from Jim’s senses.

 

Reluctantly, or as reluctant as Jim was about anything Blair suggested these days, Jim agreed. Blair, naturally, jumped at the chance to offer his help when Jim finally conceded. After all, the prospect of dealing with Jim’s problems was much more appealing than dealing with his own.  

 

Of course, he never thought that volunteering to go up in the mountains with Jim’s father to help clean out the cabin would end up with him being stuck in said cabin with said father.

 

It was all his fault. At least, that was what Jim had said when he’d called Blair to tell him not to try to come back down the mountain because the road had washed out. 

 

His exact words were, “You realize this only happened because you were with, Sandburg.”

 

Blair’s response was simply a slur against the Ellison name and a hearty wish that Jim ended up mistaking the hot sauce for the ketchup when he went to go slather his Wonderburger take-out.

 

“At least the phone and the electricity are still working,” William mentioned for about the fifth time.

 

 “We need to bring more furniture up here,” Blair replied simply because he had nothing better to say. After all, there weren’t any great anthropological tales that talked about being stuck in a cabin with your best friend’s somewhat estranged father. 

 

“I’m sorry about that. I haven’t used the place in so many years, and I really didn’t expect to have to stay over, let alone have company,” William half shrugged in apology.

 

Blair nodded his head absently, “Yeah, well it isn’t really your fault.”

 

A short silence descended before William piped up again, “Do you want a drink?”

 

“What?”

 

“Well we’re stuck in a cabin in the middle of a rainstorm and have nothing else to do. I assume you’ve passed the legal drinking age?”

 

“You keep alcohol up here?”

 

“Well, it doesn’t go bad you know? Might as well just leave a few bottles instead of having to cart them around,” William replied as he got up of the one rickety chair in the cabin and began to rummage around for glasses in the cupboards that lined the small kitchen.

  

“What suits your fancy? Scotch? Bourbon? Cognac?” William paused as he brought the glasses over and handed them to Blair who took them with a slightly confused expression on his face.

 

“Don’t blink at me like that, Blair. Just because this is a cabin it doesn’t mean that I can’t keep what I like on hand. There isn’t a law that says you have to drink beer when you’re somewhere rustic. Besides, I have fond memories of this place. If I was going to come up here, I liked to have the alcohol I liked.”

 

Blair frowned. He had spent all day with this man and had heard more sentences out of him in the last few minutes than he had in the past few hours. 

 

“Jim never mentioned this cabin before.”

 

William’s jaw clenched in Jim like fashion. He took a deep breath and said in a light, conversational tone, “Well, coming up here wasn’t that important after I got married.”

 

Blair frowned even harder. That was a lie if he’d ever been told one. It was also very creepy to realize that, if he hadn’t just spent years living with the other man’s son, he probably would’ve bought that lie. 

 

Wordlessly, the liquor was poured and William settled himself back on the floor next to Blair. The bottle was placed between them.

 

By the time Blair managed to finish his first glass, William was working on his third.

 

“Are you okay?” Blair finally asked.

 

“I’m fine,” William snipped out quickly.

 

If you added a “Sandburg” to the end of that sentence it could’ve been Jim speaking, Blair mused. His thoughts were cut short when Jim’s father began to speak again.

 

“Actually, I’m not fine. Look Blair, I’ve been meaning to tell Jimmy something, but well, he’s not here, and you are…” William trailed off as he seriously contemplated the remains of his drink.

 

“Mr. Ellison?”

 

“I…I don’t want you two boys to think that I disapprove of you. Because I don’t. At first, well at first I was worried. Then when your dissertation became public, I thought I was right in my suspicions of you, but you proved me wrong. I think, I think that you might love Jimmy more than anyone else in the world. I’m glad that he has better taste than his old man.”

 

Lights went on in Blair’s head, but the older man waved off his attempt to interrupt.

 

“Blair, please let me finish. What you’ve done for him, what you did for him. I’m in your debt.”

 

“Mr. Ellison, Jim and I… we’re not like that,” Blair stated as he made vague motions with his hands.

 

“You don’t have to hide from me you know. I know that it must be hard with Jimmy being a police officer, but I think you make a wonderful couple.”

 

“Mr. Ellison, please…”

 

“Don’t you think you ought to call me ‘Will’? I mean, you and…”

 

“Will!” Blair had to almost shout to stop the flow of words from the other man’s mouth.

 

“What?”

 

“Jim and I aren’t lovers. Your son isn’t gay,” Blair enunciated very slowly.

 

Will snorted in amusement. 

 

“I mean it!” Blair said in an exasperated tone.

 

“Well then Jimmy is an idiot. And my eldest was just a touch queer long before he ever met you, young man.”

 

This time Blair was the one who snorted in amusement.

 

“Don’t snort at your elders. You weren’t here when that boy of mine went through puberty. I’d say it’s a pretty good sign that a man is a little light in his loafers when he’s staring at the captain of the debate team when the rest of the football team is ogling the cheerleaders.”

 

Will suddenly found himself the subject of an intense, threatening glare. He had seen that look before in his life, usually from the families of employees that he’d had to fire. It didn’t take him long to figure out what the look was about.

 

“I never said anything about it to him,” he defended.

 

Blair’s answering gaze clearly stated that he did not believe the older man.

 

“I didn’t. A few weeks after the end of football season the quarterback at another school was pretty severely beaten by his peers because they thought he was a homosexual. After that, I never saw Jimmy look at another boy that way again.”

 

Two sets of eyes stared off into space for a short time. Wordlessly, they filled their glasses and drank. Finally, Blair chose to break the silence.

 

“Why didn’t you say something to him? I mean, you had no problem saying those things about his Sentinel abilities.”

 

“I don’t know,” was the whispered response.

 

Teeth nibbled at the inside of Blair’s lip for a second as he debated continuing the conversation. 

 

“I don’t believe you,” he heard his own voice whisper.

 

Will’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Grace left the boys with me? Surely it must’ve occurred to you that most women are granted custody over their husbands.”

 

“I guess I assumed that either she didn’t want them, or you got custody because you had the money for better lawyers,” Blair replied honestly.

 

“She didn’t want them. Don’t you find that odd? A mother not wanting her children? She would’ve gotten more money from the divorce if she’d had them.”

 

Blair turned that puzzle over in his mind for a bit. “She didn’t want them because Jim was gay?”

 

“Jimmy wasn’t exactly old enough to be noticing those sorts of things when Grace left.”

 

“Was it his Sentinel abilities?”

 

Will shook his head back and forth as a slight smile began to cross his lips.

 

“Steven was gay?”

 

A sharp bark of laughter bubbled out of the older man’s mouth. 

 

“Right, right, if Jim wasn’t old enough Steven definitely wasn’t…”

 

Will watched as the younger man puzzled over the riddle. He seemed to go into his own world as fingers spastically jerked up and down as if trying to connect thoughts in the slightly inebriated brain. With a sigh of sympathy, he decided to give the younger man a hint.

 

“It was because of me.”

 

“Well, of course the divorce was because of your relationship, but why leave the kids?” Blair said more to himself than to his companion.

 

“You know, talking to Jimmy, he had me convinced you were much smarter than this,” Will said teasingly.

 

“She left the boys here because of you. Did she think you’d be lonely without them? Think that it would be better to have them in an affluent neighborhood?”

 

“My dear ex-wife should’ve been paying me alimony. She lives in a much nicer house than this one, and as you may have noticed, I’m not poor. As for being lonely, well, her thoughts on that matter don’t bear repeating to anybody that isn’t deaf.”

 

Blair tilted his head to the side and thought. As he tilted his head to the other side, an idea sprung out at him.

 

“You’re gay.”

 

Will smiled at the absolute conviction in the younger man’s voice. “Grace was terrified that one or both of the boys would turn out to be queer. She thought it would be better to leave them with me so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment if they were. She said that I was filth, and that she was going to get as far away from me and my spawn as she could.”

 

“That’s horrible.”

 

“Was I that much better? Forcing my boys to become ‘manly’ because of my fears about them?”

 

Blair chose not to answer, favoring another question instead. “How did she find out?”

 

“She didn’t catch me being indiscreet if that’s what you’re asking. I may not have loved the woman, but I did respect her. I’m not a cheat. I haven’t even been with anybody since my divorce, so don’t you dare insinuate otherwise.”

 

“I didn’t mean…”  
  


“Of course you didn’t. I just, I don’t really talk about this. Ever.”

 

With a shaking hand, Will reached down to pour himself another drink. 

 

Blair frowned a little at the small shake in the appendage that had not been there when they started out the evening.

 

“Don’t give me that look. I know full well I’m old enough to be your father because you’re younger than Jimmy. So you don’t get a say in how much I imbibe,” William said when he noticed Blair’s uneasy gaze.

 

Blair found himself smiling slightly at the familiar defensive tone. 

 

“Don’t smile at me either. Just you wait until your son-in-law starts treating you like you can’t handle a few drinks.”

 

“Mr. Ellison,” Blair sighed in exasperation, “I’m not your son-in-law.”

 

“Of course you are. Just because Jimmy isn’t boning you, doesn’t mean that you aren’t married.”

 

Will took a moment to enjoy the flabbergasted look that appeared on Blair’s face.

 

“What? You thought that I had two sons without knowing how sex works?”

 

Blair shrugged helplessly not exactly sure what the appropriate thing was to say to your best friend’s apparently gay father when he’s trying to get sloshed.

 

“So, how did she find out?” he finally asked again.

 

“She found some old mementos I had hidden away in one of the spare rooms. Most of it I could’ve lied about, but… I’m not even sure how she found them. I know I should’ve gotten rid of them. Being a homosexual back then wasn’t the same as it is today.”

 

“Why did you keep them?” Blair asked softly.

 

“Why did you destroy your good name on television?”

 

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

 

“Lying to thousands of people about a scientific truth was the right thing to do?”

 

A part of Blair insisted he just drop the entire conversation right then and there. He didn’t have to deal with this. He didn’t want to deal with this. But William Ellison was obviously in pain, and it went against Blair’s nature to not offer help.

 

“The world has functioned with its loss of knowledge about sentinels for a long time. The news was causing problems with Jim’s ability to do his job.”

 

“So you sacrificed yourself on the altar of my son’s career?”

 

“It was worse than that,” Blair protested, “People I cared about were getting hurt, shot.”

 

“And you knew that Jim was going to be next.”

 

“How did this become about me?”

 

“Son, this entire conversation has been about you and Jim. And here I thought I was closer to senility than you.”

 

“Jim’s my best friend.”

 

“Best friends take each other out for drinks. They take fishing trips together to get away from their wives. They don’t spend four years of their lives virtually inseparable from each other, and they certainly don’t go over to the parent’s house to dig through musty old boxes because their ‘friend’ has to work late and can’t make it.” 

 

The hackles on the back of Blair’s neck finally began to rise.

 

“Hey, look man; I don’t think that you have any right to insinuate that I don’t know how my relationship is with Jim. You’ve been in the freaking closet for how long? And might I tell you that you raised one of the most repressed, anal, closed-off men it has ever been my pleasure to meet!”

 

“And you love him,” Will added.

 

“I, well, yeah, but not in that way. I mean, look, I’m not most guys. If you asked Jim, he’d tell you that. I’m in touch with myself. I’m in touch with my feelings.I’m not in love with Jim.”

 

Will shrugged and stared off into space for a moment. Blair had to forcibly restrain himself from checking on if the older man was zoning.

 

“Grace was perfect you know,” Will finally whispered.

 

“She didn’t want to have anything to do with her children because they might be homosexuals. That doesn’t constitute perfect to me,” Blair responded.

 

“No, not perfect in that sense, but she was the perfect wife for me. She was educated, came from a good home… Most importantly she had a very rigid view of sexual contact. Sex was only for the creation of children. My reluctance to find pleasure in her arms was the sign of a good husband as far as she was concerned.”

 

“I don’t understand. I mean, many women who were raised with those beliefs were also trained to look the other way. Even if she didn’t, leaving the children behind to be raised by what she considered an aberrant father would’ve been against her beliefs in most cases. I mean back in that era…”

 

Will held up a hand to Blair’s stream of words. “What would she have told the judge? That I was an unfit father because of my…desires? Gossip like that would’ve spread like wildfire back then. She couldn’t afford her social standing to be compromised. Grace doesn’t like to be pitied or thought the fool. She would’ve been both.”

 

“So what, she left her children with a person she found morally repugnant so that she could preserve her tee time at the local country club?”

 

Will simply shrugged in response.

 

Blair leaned back, sighed, and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “No wonder Jim represses everything,” he muttered under his breath.

 

“Want another drink?” Will asked as he poured himself another shot.

 

“You realize that if we keep doing this we’re going to get plastered,” Blair pointed out.

 

“You planning on driving somewhere?” Will asked with a slight twist to his lips.

 

Blair shook his head and held out his glass.

 

“So, what was it that Grace found that convinced her so thoroughly of your gayness?” Blair asked.

 

Will didn’t answer. Instead he slammed back his last drink, grit his teeth together and said nothing.

 

“You know, it’s kind of pointless to get us both drunk so that you can have this moment of catharsis and then not say anything. I mean, even if you weren’t thinking about it consciously, you had to have been thinking about it subconsciously. You wanted to give your approval to Jim and me, only there is no Jim and me, but you didn’t know that. Thinking about having to give your approval would’ve naturally brought up old memories. Now, if you’re anything like your son, you haven’t shared those with anybody in years, but you obviously still remember them so you aren’t suppressing them. Confession is good for the…”  
  
”Enough! Good God man, how does Jimmy deal with you when you’re like this?”

 

“He usually says something like, ‘get to the point, Sandburg,’” Blair said with a very poor impersonation of Jim’s growl.

 

Will shook his head in amusement a moment before responding, “A photograph. She found a photograph. We weren’t even holding hands. It was just… the look we were giving each other, I suppose. She asked me about it, and I didn’t deny it.”

 

“Why not?” Blair asked with what he hoped was gentle curiosity.

 

“I’m not a good man, Blair. I’m sure Jimmy has told you stories about living with me. Well, they’re true. But, I wasn’t always that way. When I was young and idealistic I had standards. I wasn’t going to be one of those men that married some poor woman so that he could have children. I wasn’t going to ever stab anybody in the back. I was, well I had a whole list of things that I was never going to do. I always said that I would never deny our love, and it was the one promise to myself that I couldn’t break. When Grace asked…” William shrugged and took another sip out of his glass.

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“I’m not sure really. Moved off somewhere warmer I guess.”

 

“You don’t know? He just up and left you?”

 

“In a manner of speaking,” Will said evasively even as old hurt flared into his eyes.

 

“Hey, come on, you can’t leave me hanging like that,” Blair encouraged as he poured the elder man another drink.

 

“Did you know that I didn’t start my business as a sole proprietorship?”

 

Blair’s eyebrows furrowed. He quickly reviewed his possible responses and chose to go with his first. “No offence, but that has got to be one of the worst topic changes ever introduced to a conversation.”

 

“I’m not changing the subject, I’m giving you background history. One would think that an anthropologist such as yourself would have appreciation for the details. Of course, I would also expect respect for your elders,” Will trailed off with a pointed stare.

 

“I’m a product of my culture. Whether I like it or not, I am a middle-class, American male. Given the time frame of my birth, my mother’s political and spiritual beliefs and my fatherless status, I am completely within the anthropological norms by not respecting you.”

 

“That is a complete load of malarkey, young man. There are just so many different influences that could’ve impacted you beyond that, that, that well – what I’m trying to say is that respect for elders is a choice – one that you didn’t make, and damn, I lost my train of thought,” Will confessed.

 

Blair smiled triumphantly. “That’s just because you’re drunk, now tell me about the guy you couldn’t deny,” he prodded more eagerly than he would’ve had he not been slightly intoxicated himself.

 

“Well, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, I founded my company as a partnership. I met Richard in college. My father had sent me off to the East Coast for school. The Ellison name was already a well respected one and not too bad off as far as money went. Richard’s family, well that was a different story. They didn’t have much, but they worked hard and wanted the best for their son.”

 

“So they sent him to the same college you went to?” Blair asked.

 

“Yes, and we couldn’t have been more different. I was studious, fastidious, and completely focused on getting as good of grades as possible. Richard, he was obsessed with proving that he was good enough to be there. I didn’t actually meet him until our sophomore year, but I knew his name long before then. How could I not? There were constant bets going on in the dorms about which one of us was smarter.”

 

“Why didn’t you try to meet him sooner then?”

 

Will looked surprised at that question. “It was so long ago, but… I think that I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to beat him if I saw him. As long as he was a name I could compete with him. Once he was an actual person, well, I wasn’t the hard man back then that I am today.”

 

Blair chewed on his lip for a second before making another query, “So what happened when you did finally meet him?”

 

“I fell head-over-heels in lust with him and spent the next four weeks trailing around after him like some balloon on a string.”

 

“I take it he eventually noticed?”

 

“Yeah,” Will’s face took on a dreamy quality as he spoke, “he really noticed me. I thought I was going to die from happiness the first time he, well, I’m not going to talk about that no matter how drunk I am. Anyway, we finished college, and we began to plan out our future. We both wanted a business, and between my technical abilities and money and his charm and hubris, we thought we had a winning formula.”

 

“You must’ve been right. I’ve seen the house you own,” Blair commented.

 

“I suppose you have at that. That house was his idea you know? The instant he saw it he knew it was the one. He said, ‘Willie, that is going to be our house. It’s big enough that nobody will ever doubt us when we say that we’re just sharing expenses.’”

 

“I’m guessing this cabin was his idea as well?”

 

Will smiled at the question. “How’d you guess?”

 

“Well, you did say that you didn’t have much use for it once you were married,” Blair reminded him.

 

“True, true. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, well we chose to move out here because of his parents. He couldn’t bear to be near them and see their disappointment every time he didn’t settle down with his latest girlfriend. He figured it would be easier to remain unmarried if they never saw the women he dated. Less chance of them questioning why the latest one didn’t work out.”  
  


“So you kept dating ever though you were together?”

 

“It was simply how it was done back then. We wanted to live together. If you wanted to do that and not be a penniless bum or be incarcerated, you had to project the right image. If we both dated, then the world saw us as two young business partners sharing the expense of a nice house while chasing their dream.”

 

“No girlfriends and you become the two business partners who the rest of the community gossips about over drinks?” Blair guessed.

 

“Pretty much. In any case, the business was running great. Life was going great. Then I came home one day to a woman’s raincoat hanging by the front door. It wasn’t unusual, we sometimes brought our ‘dates’ home so that the gossip circle would have insider proof that we weren’t ‘that way’ with each other. We usually told each other first, so I just thought that I’d been so preoccupied at work that I must’ve forgotten,” Will stopped and took a quick gulp of his drink.

 

“You found them together,” Blair’s words were stated softly and sadly.

 

“He had her in our bed. I couldn’t, I didn’t know what to do, so I ran back downstairs and proceeded to make my way through whatever was in the decanter in the sitting room. I never even heard her leave. The worst part was that he wouldn’t even talk to me about it except to say that he couldn’t continue to be with me that way. He said that my desire to lay for him like a woman…” Will trailed off as he gripped the glass in his hand tightly.

 

“Will, man, you’re gonna hurt yourself if you squeeze that too much harder.”

 

“I didn’t believe him,” Will continued heedless of Blair’s interruption or his own silence, “He’d always been so adamant about loving me. I had never had a reason to doubt that. I felt so certain that something had happened, that he was trying to protect me. We’d talked about it before - that one of us might have to take a wife to keep us from being exposed. But, he wouldn’t talk. Week after week he’d drag his latest girlfriends past me. The loose ones would blush very prettily at me when they found me making breakfast at five in the morning while they were trying to sneak out of the house. I put up with all of it knowing that he was doing it to protect me. After all, he loved me.”

 

“I can’t believe you put up with that,” Blair muttered.

 

“People who are in love do stupid things. Sometimes it takes a big thing to shake them out of their stupidity, sometimes it’s just the straw and the camel.”

 

“Given how this story is going, I’m guessing you’re a straw and camel kinda guy?”

 

“I caught Richard flirting with my secretary. Julia, she was a sweet girl, a good friend - one whose reputation didn’t need to be damaged by the lothario image that Richard was obtaining. I told him to leave her alone. Told him that she didn’t deserve do be dragged into whatever he was doing. She came in later that week beaming with the news of a dinner date with Richard.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

Will’s lips twisted into a cold smile. “I gave that bastard the best screw he ever had. Chasing women takes time, and while his grades might have been close to mine in college, half of the time it was because the teachers liked him so much. He never knew it was coming until he came home one evening with the Mayor’s daughter on his arm and a key that didn’t fit in the lock. You should’ve seen him the next morning as he stormed into my office demanding to know why he was locked out of his own house.”

 

“What did you say?”

 

“That I’d have him arrested for trespassing if he didn’t leave within the next five minutes. I also thanked him for being so generous in giving me the business, the house, and the cabin. The look on his face when I told him made me feel guilty until he opened his mouth. Do you know what he said? He had the balls to say, ‘But I trusted you. I love you!’ My own security personnel had to restrain me from choking him.”

 

“Why did you keep the mementos of him then?”

 

“Because part of me has never really believed that he didn’t love me in the beginning. Because part of me would’ve given anything for Jimmy and Stevie to have big brown eyes and curly brown hair. So know you know how truly horrible a father I am. I wanted my sons to be my lover’s children instead of my own.”

 

“I think that you’re confusing the issue here. It’s normal to want to have your lover’s children. Given that you didn’t love Grace – it makes a certain amount of longing understandable. The problem comes when you make parenting decisions based on that longing instead of reality. If you can’t love your children for who they are…”

 

“No offence, son, but I think you and I both know how well I loved my children for ‘who they were.’”

 

“So? Start now. I mean, nobody is dead yet. Tell Jim and Steven about you. Let them get to know the real father that they have.”

 

“No, I can’t do that. You – you’re different. But, Jimmy and Stevie, you just don’t tell your two grown sons that you’re a queer little fairy. You think they hate me now? God only knows what they’d do if they knew the truth.”

 

“Weren’t you the one telling me that Jim’s not exactly on the straight and narrow?” Blair asked.

 

“That is different. Jimmy, he’s more like Richard was, he’s, well manly.”

 

“You mean you’re making a distinction here because you think that Jim is more butch? Man, you are in serious need of opening your horizons here. You hardly fit the definition of a ‘queen.’ And if you secretly do, well then you need to come to terms with that. And if we’re talking about you ‘wanting to take it like a woman,’ well gotta tell you that has nothing to do with your masculinity.”

 

“Spoken like a true hippie,” the words spoken were harsh, but the tone was not.

 

“Son of a hippie,” Blair corrected.

 

“Better than Jimmy – he’s a son of bitch. I oughta know I married her,” Will rejoined with a drunken chuckle.

 

Blair snorted and grabbed the now significantly lighter bottle. “I think that we’d better put this away.”

 

“Ah, you’re probably right. I already know I’m going to regret most of this conversation tomorrow,” Will said as he pushed himself out of the lone rickety chair, “I’m going to go curl up on the bed in there and try to sleep. Have fun on the ground.”

 

Blair shook his head and carried the empty bottle to the kitchen. He couldn’t imagine Jim ever just taking the bed instead of offering to sleep on the floor, yet the tone had been one that he’d often heard come out of his partner’s lips. 

 

Jim.

 

How the hell was he going to handle this with Jim? It wasn’t exactly his story to tell, but his partner would know something had happened. Then again, with the way that their relationship had been going as of late, there was a good chance that Jim would notice and not ask.

 

Was it a bad thing that Blair had already decided to take advantage of that highly likely silence? Or was it simply a sign that he was a good person who knew that it would cause Jim pain to learn the secret from his best friend’s mouth instead of his father’s? 

 

With a grunt, Blair settled back down on the spot on the floor where he’d been sitting during his conversation with Will. He carefully stretched out and stared up at the ceiling willing himself not to think and wishing that he had his partner’s ability for repression.

 

So much for Jim’s problems being easier to deal with than his own.

    


End file.
